View full sizeMatt Rourke / APPhillip Fundenberg protests against a proposed tax on soda and other sugary beverages outside Philadelphia City Hall on Tuesday. Mayor Michael Nutter is pushing a 2-cents-per-ounce tax on sugary beverages to prevent cuts in the city's cash-strapped school system. A similar plan was scrapped last year.

From The Associated Press:

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Opponents of a proposal to tax soda to raise money for the financially troubled city school system rallied at City Hall on Tuesday, saying the plan would encourage people to leave the city to buy soft drinks and force hundreds of beverage industry employees out of work.

Tractor-trailers bearing the logos of various unions and soda companies circled the historic building, honking their horns, while several hundred people — many of them union workers — held signs urging that the idea be dropped. Mayor Michael Nutter is pushing the 2-cents-per-ounce tax on soda and other sugary beverages to help prevent cuts in the city’s cash-strapped school system. If passed, the tax would generate $60 million for the district this year and $80 million next year, preventing drastic cuts in school programs, according to Nutter’s office.

But the opponents conducting Tuesday’s protest estimated that the tax could cost hundreds of jobs while doubling or more than doubling the cost of soda products, from 2-liter bottles to cases. A similar plan was scrapped last year. “This is about jobs,” said Bill Hamilton, a vice president of the Teamsters union. “This isn’t about making people healthy.”

One employee at a Pepsi Co. plant in northeast Philadelphia said he fears his job would be relocated if the tax passes. George Alvira, 58, who said he’s worked for Pepsi for 37 years and wants to work there at least 10 more years, said he doesn’t think the company would stay in the city if the tax was enacted.

Alvira said he was shocked that the city put the proposal back on the table after it was dropped last year. “I thought it was over with,” he said. “We’ve got enough taxes down here for everything.”

A message left with Pepsi’s corporate headquarters in Purchase, N.Y., wasn’t immediately returned.

After a lengthy public hearing Friday, City Council is scheduled to discuss the tax again later this week. Several City Council members attended Tuesday’s rally and said the tax plan would create more problems than it would solve. “It’s a bad tax,” Councilman Brian O’Neill said. “We can’t kill one industry to help somebody else.”

A counter-protester, however, agreed with the mayor. Joseph Caucci, 30, who said he found out about the rally through social networking sites, held a sign that said “Soda Tax Yes.” Caucci said it would be a good “sin tax” that would discourage him and others from drinking soda and would help save jobs in city government. “I don’t want to see teachers lose their jobs,” he said.

Nutter, who was taking a daylong tour of city schools, accused the beverage companies of “fear-mongering” and assured residents that “no one is going to die of thirst here in Philadelphia” because of the tax. “Folks have to make a choice: Stand with the students or stand with the soda lobby,” Nutter said. “I’m standing with the students.”

Last year, then-Gov. Paterson proposed putting a special tax on regular soda as a way to close the state budget gap, but it faced similar opposition and died.